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384 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Greece and had knowledge in many different fields and was a notable philosopher and astronomer. Aristotle was geocentric. He believed that the Earth was in the middle of the solar system along with Ptolemy. -
100
Ptolemy
Ptolemy was a famous astrologist born in Egypt. The Almagest is a mathematical and astronomical book writen by Ptolemy. One of the most influential scientific texts of all time, its geocentric model was accepted for more than 1200 years. -
1473
Copernicus
Copernicus was born in Poland and was a person who excelled at astronomy and economics. Copernicus was a Renaissance era mathematician and astronomer who made a model of the solar system with the Sun as the center but his ideas were rejected. -
1546
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe was a nobleman, astronomer and writer who was born in Sweden. Tycho's view of astronomy was driven by his passion for accurate observations, improved instruments of measurement drove his life's work. Tycho was the last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope. -
1564
Galileo
Galileo was born in Italy and worked in many fields like astronomy, physics, engineering, etc. Galileo made a telescope with about 3 times the magnification compared to Hans Lippershey's. He later made improved versions with up to about 30 times the magnification. -
1570
Hans Lippershey
Hans Lippershey was a spectacle-maker who was born in Germany. He is commonly put together with the invention of the telescope. This is because he was the first person who tried to file a patent for it. -
1571
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer and mathematician noted for his books about planetary motion. He laid down a foundation for one of Isaac Newton's laws. He was also an assistant to Tycho Brahe. -
Giovanni Cassini
Giovanni Cassini was an Italian astronomer and engineer and in known for his work in those fields. He also discovered four of Saturn's moons. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was born in England and is known as one of the most influential scientists of all time. He is very well credited as the discoverer of the laws of motion which changed the way we live. -
William Herschel
William Herschel was a German born astronomer and composer. He created the first large telescope and was one of the most popular astronomer in the 18th century. He discovered the planet Uranus. -
Percival Lowell
Percival Lowell was an American businessman and astronomer born in 1855. He founded an observatory in Flagstaff and he formed the beginning of the discovery of Pluto after his death. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
Ejnar Hertzsprung was a Danish chemist and astronomer born in 1873. his greatest contribution to astronomy was the development of a classification system for stars called the "Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram" and has been used ever since as a classification system to explain stellar types and stellar evolution. -
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German physicist born in 1879. Formulated the theory of relativity which revolutionized modern astrophysics.
He has:
Received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. Received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1925 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1926 -
Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer born in 1889. Discovered the existence of galaxies outside our own Milky Way galaxy. He observed that galaxies move faster away from us as their distance increases, proving that the universe is expanding. -
Karl Jansky
Karl Jansky was an American astronomer and radio engineer born in 1905. At Bell Telephone Laboratories Jansky built an antenna designed to receive radio waves at a frequency of 20.5 MHz . It was mounted on a turntable that allowed it to be rotated in any direction. It had a diameter of approximately 100 ft. and stood 20 ft. tall. -
John Glenn
John Glenn was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. He was a part of a group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the 1st American to orbit the Earth, and the was the 5th person ever in space. -
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. Apollo 11 was the trip where Armstrong landed on the moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. -
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin was a pilot and cosmonaut. He became the first human to journey into outer space when his spaceship completed one orbit of the Earth in April of 1961. Yuri became a celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honor. -
Sputnik
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik. It went into a low Earth orbit on October 4th, 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died, then silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere. It has completed 1440 orbits. -
The Apollo Program
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the 3rd United States human space program carried out by NASA, which succeeded in landing the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972. First thought of during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
The Space Shuttle program was the 4th human spaceflight program carried out by NASA, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. The Space Shuttle was composed of an orbiter launched with 2 reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank and carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb of payload into low Earth orbit. -
Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder was launched December 4, 1996. It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver a lander and the first-ever robotic rover to the surface of the red planet. Pathfinder not only accomplished this goal but also returned an extreme amount of data and outlived its presumed life. -
Cassini Orbiter
The Cassini–Huygens mission was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send an orbiter to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and moons. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. -
Difference between reflecting and refracting
A reflector telescope uses two mirrors instead of two lenses. A second, small, flat mirror in the middle of the tube reflects this image to the eyepiece. For refractor, the job of the objective lens, opposite the eyepiece end, is to gather the light coming from a distant object, such as a star, and bend it into a single point of focus. A second lens’ (the eyepiece) job is to enlarge that focused image for our retina; it acts as a magnifying glass. -
InSight Mars Lander
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and most payload instruments it carries were built by European companies.
